Mar. 23, 2013

A dejected Cincinnati guard Sean Kilpatrick after losing to against Creighton. / The Enquirer/Joseph Fuqua II

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PHILADELPHIA – When Mick Cronin and his staff take to the road now, to watch AAU games and read reports and study tape and talk to high school coaches and do whatever else it is they do to bring players to Clifton, maybe they should consider something like this:

Go to some farm community in the middle of Corn Belt nowhere. Find a 6-foot-3 kid who has a basket in his driveway at the end of a long lane, surrounded by corn or wheat or cows. You get the picture. This particular kid might not be able to hit his head on the rim. But he can shoot.

He has been shooting since he was 5 or 6. Every day, all the time. He doesn’t stop shooting until he makes 20 threes in a row. He doesn’t stop if it’s raining canned hams and tractor parts. He has a key to the truck and the gym. That’s all he needs.

Sign this kid. Gear some of your offense to get him open shots. Tell him to shoot. You won’t have to tell him twice. He knows all about shooting.

Great effort from the Bearcats Friday, against Creighton. Good defense in holding the Blue Jays eight points under their season average, and in keeping their shooting percentage six points lower than their norm. It didn’t matter.

“That’s our season, right there,’’ said Shaq Thomas, who showed flashes of offense. He wasn’t talking about scoring, though. Thomas was referencing UC’s want-to. “We’re never going to give up.’’

That’s a noble trait, but really, nobody should give up. Especially not now. Effort should be assumed. In the end, it’s about making shots. In the end, it’s always about making shots. That’s why Creighton won the game, and UC lamented a missed opportunity.

The Blue Jays made nine of their first 12. Their first option off the bench, a 6-foot-7 sharpshooter named Ethan Wragge, drained his first four three-pointers, like he was at the state fair, trying to win a stuffed bear for his girlfriend. Again, this guy doesn’t even start.

Meantime Doug McDermott, Creighton’s best player – and truly one of the five best quasi-am players currently working – was hitting from everywhere, just like that farm kid Mick needs to find. “You take one thing away, he just finds another hot spot,’’ said Titus Rubles.

UC didn’t do a bad job on McDermott. He was just that good. He wriggled inside for muscle shots. He ran UC’s defenders through screen after screen, until he got the ball and the shot he wanted. Truly a smart scorer. “From the shoulders up, he is truly one of the better basketball players I’ve ever been around,’’ said his dad Greg, who also happens to be the Blue Jays coach.

McDermott averages 23; He had 27 Friday, including 11-for-11 from the free throw line. No one is suggesting the Bearcats can land the next Doug McDermott. Only that they need to have a few players who can really, really shoot.

What they had this year – and, excepting perhaps Deonta Vaughn, all of Cronin’s time at UC – is an athletic team that falls short on putting the ball in the basket. Defense is nice, but it doesn’t win championships.

That’s why the Bearcats pushed the rock uphill all afternoon. They hung around, the way they do. Every time their try-hard got them close, some McDermott or Wragge would drop a dagger on their aspirations. Even when the game was close, which it was most of the way, it didn’t seem that close.

It was sad and fitting, then, that UC’s last, best chance was a three-point try. Sean Kilpatrick is their best shooter and scorer, but he suffered through a 1-for-7 first half, and has not been as consistently solid as a top scorer needs to be.

He launched a three from the left wing with six seconds left and the Bearcats down, 66-63. “I thought it was going in. Everybody else thought it was going in. It was halfway down,’’ Kilpatrick said.

“I was praying it would go in, for my career,’’ said Cashmere Wright, whose career ended instead.

It didn’t go in. A shot that likely would have forced overtime bounced off the iron and the glass, and UC’s season ended the way a lot of its games ended. The Bearcats were resolute enough to win big games. Just not offensive enough.

You could suggest that the refs jobbed UC, or that Jaquon Parker wasn’t himself after he took a hand to the face three minutes into the game. But that wasn’t it. UC lost because it didn’t make shots. No surprise there.

A new league, free of the tractor pulls that characterize Big East contests, could free up UC to play a little less like candidates for the UFC. But only if Cronin & Co. can find some shooters. Find a cornfield somewhere, and a 17-year-old who’s been shooting since the womb. Sign the kid. Win a game like the one you lost Friday.